Scientologists 'got in over their heads'

Some told prosecutors poor decisions were made in trying to care for the
disturbed woman

St. Petersburg Times, February 24, 2000
By Thomas C. Tobin

CLEARWATER -- More than two hours had passed since emergency room doctor
David Minkoff had spoken with staffers at the Church of Scientology.
As a favor, he had agreed to treat the young woman who had spent more
than
two weeks in the church's Clearwater hotel. She had an infection, they
said,
but was not seriously ill.

It was an hour's drive to the Pasco County hospital where Minkoff
worked.

They said they'd bring her right up.

Now he assumed they weren't coming.

At 9:30 p.m. he heard the cries of an ER technician.

"Help! Help! Help!"

The patient was splayed across a wheelchair -- limp, gaunt and unkempt.
Minkoff went to work but there were no vital signs, just the faint
wiggling
of her heart, signifying death.

Only then did it hit him. This was Lisa McPherson, the woman from the
church.

"Oh my God!"

"The whole thing was just such a fiasco," Minkoff said three years later
in
a 1998 sworn statement to prosecutors, who charged the church's
Clearwater
operation with two felonies.

His account is contained in nearly 1,000 pages of sworn statements from
five
Scientologists with first-hand knowledge of McPherson's final days at
the
Fort Harrison Hotel, where church staffers tried to nurse her through a
severe mental breakdown.
Prosecutors released the statements in December to buttress their case
that
the church abused McPherson and illegally practiced medicine on her.
Now, the statements loom large after a judge's ruling Wednesday that
delayed
the release of the 10,000-page investigative file on McPherson's death.
In
the absence of that file, the five Scientologists provide the most
complete
telling thus far of Lisa McPherson's death and of the investigation that
followed.
Among the disclosures:

Alain Kartuzinski, a church counseling supervisor, admitted lying to
police
in 1996, telling them he had little to do with McPherson. Speaking with
prosecutors two years later, he said he arranged to have McPherson, 36,
confined in a special "isolation watch" and authorized her to be
medicated.

Kartuzinski lied, he said, because Clearwater police detectives were
"sneeringly antagonistic" and he was scared.
Janis Johnson, a church medical officer, also misled police, telling
them
her office gave only "basic first aid" and considered McPherson a
regular
hotel guest. In fact, fellow Scientologists revealed that Johnson
oversaw an
unusual regimen of care for McPherson at Kartuzinski's direction. An
unlicensed doctor, she also authorized medication and gave McPherson
injections of a prescription muscle relaxant.
David Houghton told how he filled a large syringe with ground aspirin,
liquid Benadryl and orange juice, then worked it along the outside of
McPherson's teeth and squirted the mixture behind her tongue. He had
help
from his fellow Scientologists, who held McPherson's arms and legs. A
veteran dentist from Iowa and Ohio, he was not yet licensed in Florida
and
had no doctor's authorization and no medical history on McPherson.
Judy Goldsberry-Weber, once a licensed practical nurse, heard of
Houghton's
procedure and was outraged. "What doctor's order did you have to do
this?"
she demanded to know, almost coming to blows with Johnson. She later
reported her fellow staffers to the church legal office.
Minkoff, a longtime Scientologist who is not on the church staff, told
prosecutors he violated standard medical procedure by prescribing sleep
aids
for McPherson without ever examining her. "It was foolish to do what I
did,"
the doctor admitted.

Three of the five Scientologists admitted to prosecutors the effort to
help
McPherson was hurt by poor decisions and miscommunication. Also, some of
those caring for McPherson missed or minimized the signs of her physical
decline.
But they were motivated, they told prosecutors, by a sincere desire to
help
McPherson. They tried to be gentle, and many suffered bruises and
scrapes
from violent encounters with McPherson.

"I wasn't trying to let her die," Kartuzinski said, adding: "There was
no
doubt in my mind that I had to do what I was doing, right or wrong."
Houghton said he performed the oral injection "because I felt it was
something that would help her."

"These people were actually trying to do something right," said Minkoff,
who
is not a church staffer. But they "got in over their heads and didn't
know
it."

Once a senior Scientology executive, Kartuzinski was demoted to a file
clerk
in a church warehouse after McPherson's death became public.
He told prosecutors he made three big mistakes.
He violated a church policy that states that Scientology counseling at
the
Fort Harrison Hotel is of no use to "psychotics" such as McPherson, lest
they "leave the organization open to failures."
He did not delegate his heavy workload to others, which might have left
him
more time to deal with McPherson.
He also designated himself as her "case supervisor," which meant that
under
church policy he could have no direct contact with her.

On Nov. 18, 1995, McPherson took off her clothes at the scene of a minor
auto accident and was taken to Morton Plant Hospital by paramedics.
Kartuzinski was one of several Scientologists who arrived to secure her
release, fearing she would be subjected to psychiatric care, which is
shunned in Scientology.
After failing to convince a friend of McPherson's to care for her at
home,
Kartuzinski said, he decided to take her to the Fort Harrison.
There, he supervised the progress of hundreds of Scientologists as they
underwent church counseling, called "auditing."
It was Kartuzinski who determined McPherson was a "Potential Trouble
Source,
Type 3," a psychotic person who is not only a threat to herself and
others,
but to Scientology in general. He believed she was stuck in a disturbing
"mental image picture" from her past, perhaps from a previous life.
The antidote was a Scientology procedure called the "Introspection
Rundown,"
which calls for a regimen of vitamins and forced, quiet isolation,
followed
by "auditing."

Once inside the Fort Harrison, McPherson became crazed, speaking
nonsensically, spitting out food, staring at light bulbs, sticking her
head
in the toilet, attacking the staff and jumping around her hotel room.
A counseling attempt went awry when the 13-year church member licked an
e-meter, a small Scientology machine for measuring a person's reactions
during auditing.
Kartuzinski recruited Janis Johnson, the medical officer, to organize a
"watch" over McPherson. They assembled female staffers "of a certain
size"
who could "gently put her back in the room if needed," he said. "Not
meek
little things that would be scared."
He also authorized them to give McPherson a prescription sedative,
chloral
hydrate.

Talking with police in 1996, he minimized his role in McPherson's care
and
said she did not receive the Introspection Rundown.
"Yes, I was lying to them," Kartuzinski told prosecutors in 1998. "I was
scared. Scared for myself. Scared for the church, possibly." He said he
thought the police were against Scientology and wouldn't understand.
He began telling the truth after church attorneys reprimanded him, he
said.
In the days before McPherson died, staffers sent notes to Kartuzinski
that
she was weak and couldn't walk. He did not seek medical help, he said,
attributing her symptoms to her mental condition. Had he known her
problem
was physical, he said, "I would have taken a completely different
course."

On Dec. 5, 1995, 17 days after McPherson entered the Fort Harrison,
Johnson
came to Kartuzinski with the news that McPherson appeared sick with a
raging
infection.
They decided to seek medical help, but Kartuzinski feared doctors at
nearby
Morton Plant Hospital would place her in a psychiatric ward.
He asked Dr. David Minkoff to see her.
He also said he was relying on the judgment of Johnson, who, he assumed,
had
been in good communication with Minkoff.

Kartuzinski assumed incorrectly.
Before the day of McPherson's death, Minkoff remembered only two calls
from
the Scientology staff, who told him her problems were mental.
He prescribed liquid Valium because they said she needed sleep, but he
never
examined her, got a medical history or found out if she was taking other
medications.

"I'm not trying to justify it," Minkoff told prosecutors. "When I first
saw
the prescription for injectable Valium I thought, "Jeez, how could I
have
done that?"'

Meanwhile, Johnson, who did not have a medical license, was seen by
fellow
staffers giving McPherson injections of a prescription muscle relaxant
that
Minkoff never authorized.
Houghton, the staff dentist, got involved when he overheard Johnson
saying
McPherson was refusing to sleep or swallow. He spoke up, saying he knew
the
anatomy of the human throat and could help.
Kartuzinski vetoed the use of Valium, but he and Houghton devised their
own
treatment.
They would give McPherson aspirin, which, according to Scientology
founder
L. Ron Hubbard, can block "mental image pictures" from surfacing in the
mind. The Benadryl was to help McPherson get the rest required for
"auditing."
Houghton, who was still studying for a Florida dental license, performed
his
novel procedure three times with a large syringe that prosecutors now
refer
to as a turkey baster.
At least one other staffer in the church medical office objected.
Judy Goldsberry-Weber had promised the doctors at Morton Plant Hospital
that
the church would look after McPherson 24 hours a day. Days later, she
overheard Johnson and Houghton discussing how McPherson had to be held
down,
and she heatedly confronted them.

Houghton, now licensed as a dentist in Florida, told prosecutors he had
never force-medicated anyone in nine years as a dentist. The prosecutors
asked him: Why would a professional do such a thing without medical
advice
or consent?

"You're talking about aspirin and Benadryl," he responded. "You're
talking
about something that anybody could walk into Albertsons and pick up and
buy."

On the evening of McPherson's death, Kartuzinski and Johnson, the church
medical officer, called Minkoff at the emergency room at Columbia New
Port
Richey Hospital. She had a severe infection, had suddenly lost 12 pounds
and
had diarrhea, they said. Johnson asked Minkoff to prescribe penicillin
but
he declined.

He told them McPherson should be seen by a doctor immediately. He
advised
them to take her to Morton Plant Hospital, just five minutes from the
Fort
Harrison. But Minkoff agreed to see McPherson when Kartuzinski expressed
fears about the Morton Plant psychiatric ward. Plus, Johnson assured him
the
situation was not dire, he said.

Minkoff viewed Kartuzinski as highly competent and thought Johnson had
her
Florida medical license. In fact, she let it lapse in Arizona after an
inquiry into her alleged drug use.
"I thought I knew these people," Minkoff said.
There was more he didn't know.
McPherson was limp earlier that day and unable to walk. Her breathing
was
labored. Her eyes were fixed and unblinking. Her face was gaunt, a sign
of
severe dehydration. Minkoff was never told, he said, how violent and
delusional she was, or that she had resisted food and liquids.

"I think if any of these things would have come up," he said, "it would
have
been a completely different ballgame."
That night as Lisa McPherson lay dead in his emergency room, Minkoff
said he
screamed at Johnson for bringing someone to his door in such "horrific"
shape.

He told prosecutors: "I was shocked out of my wits."

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